Ep.12/ What Goes into a GREAT Admissions Essay: Interview with Dr. Lauren Rubin [Part 2]
In this episode, Thomas connects with Dr. Lauren Rubin. She talks about the important writing components of an essay and how to organize the ideas on the paper.
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In this episode of Admittedly Podcast, Thomas connects with Dr. Lauren Rubin. Dr. Rubin has over twenty years of experience teaching test prep and essay writing to students of all ages.
In today’s show, Dr. Rubin talks about the important writing components of an essay and how to organize the ideas on the paper. One of the key steps to making a great essay is to first read the material with attention and fully understand the concept of what was read. After that, the next step should be using evidence to prove your point and structure all the facts and sources.
Even before this step, it’s also important for the student to have feedback on their previous essays in order to improve their skills.
Key Highlights
Learn the writing aspects of a great essay.
To keep sharpening writing skills is crucial to practice.
The student needs to have guidance throughout the practice.
The student also needs to understand what is being asked of them.
The process of writing needs to take into account the character limits.
It's important to revise what was written in the first drafts.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Thomas: Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes. But I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Today, we are picking up from our last episode, where we were chatting with Dr. Lauren Rubin, my longtime friend, and an expert in standardized test preparation and essay writing. In this episode, we will address the writing component of the application. And the key differences between writing an essay for English class and writing an admissions essay. So let's dive right in. Okay, and, and that, then you started touching on the writing. So the reading translates directly to effectiveness in writing.
Lauren: I think that reading well, and writing well are intimately connected. Yes. And I think that, especially when you're writing an essay, if you have to write an essay on a subject, like analyzing a section of a book, if you don't thoroughly understand what's being said, in the book, you can't possibly write a good essay. I had a student recently who I had written something about a subject I knew she knew about off the top of her head, it wasn't anything to do with any journal or book, it was just knowledge she had because I wanted her to write without having to refer to anything. And she wrote an astounding essay on something she knew well, and she was able to look at how to organize an essay effectively because that's all she had to concentrate on. But when you add, having to understand The Great Gatsby, the symbology behind it, and Fitzgerald's phrasing, then it's double the work. And so both of them, I think, are crucial to be a successful writer.
Thomas: And it's interesting that you talk about assignments and students that you work with, because you and I have had multiple conversations, and it seems like an increasing number of conversations over the years, around students that are going to very good schools, and who really are not challenged in the classroom with writing, talking.
Lauren: I find that astounding, why is that? I have no idea. I mean, we have students at very good schools that are private, mostly, but not only. And they may write one essay a term, which I find that's just inexcusable. To me, I think that's very lazy on the type of the part of the curriculum and the instructor, I've had students that have a lot of assignments, but then there's their teachers won't give them back.
So in other words, they'll write a paper, then they'll write an update to the paper and have no idea if they've done the right thing. So then when they write the next paper, they don't have any feedback from the previous one. So they can't possibly improve, because they don't get any feedback back because they're too busy, I guess, to grade them quickly. So there are a lot of challenges in the way these things are taught, that don't allow these kids to really grow as writers. And this is a formative time for them to be able to write, they're going to have to write in anything in their academic life, no matter what subject they go into. They need to be able to write and so not having those skills as a junior or senior in high school is concerning, I think,
Thomas: no, absolutely. And I can feel the parents listening to this podcast, again, rolling their eyes and saying, Wait, now I need to make sure that even though they're doing homework until 11 o'clock at night that they're writing more, what are some things that you would recommend that the students do to keep to sharpen, improve, practice their writing?
Lauren: I think that's a really good question. To me, in a college environment, whether you're doing a social studies major, or any kind of humanities, or even any kind of science, you will be writing a paper where you need to synthesize source documents and write your point of view, you need to effectively understand how to use evidence to prove your point, how to organize that, how to deepen your analysis, so that it's very clear where you're going in your argument, utilizing these extra sources. That's what you're going to do in college. Those are the papers you're going to write. So that skill needs to be pretty strong before you walk into your freshman year in my opinion, and that's one of the reasons I love AP Lang. I think, obviously, it's taught very differently in many places, but the test itself has three kinds of essays. They are all very, very relevant and practical for their upcoming academic life.
So I think it's a great class to learn those skills. So to me a synthesis essay, reading any kind of source documents about honestly, any subject, coming up with a point of view, and understanding how to use those documents to prove your point of view, effectively, and a counterargument is a key skill that every student has to have before they go into college, in my opinion,
Thomas: No, I could not agree more and put you on the spot a little bit here, and understandable if you don't have an answer here, because I don't think we may not have enough data. But you and I have worked with students who are in the AP system, the American system, the IB, the International Baccalaureate system, and then also the A levels, right? Three very different systems, all of which are equally respected and valued, and understood by US universities.
But is there anything that you've noticed, between those three systems where one system prepares you better for something or students are stronger in one area or another area, I'm certainly not advocating for parents to shift their students, but it's more an awareness of the three different teaching and learning methodologies and how they might impact the reading and writing, test prep, and all the good things that you're looking at daily basis.
Lauren: I think, first of all, I need to preface this by saying I wish I had a better answer than the one I'm gonna give. Yes, fair enough. Because I think ultimately, what really matters is who teaches the course, and which courses are offered, because as I've learned from you, specifically, these higher level versus lower level classes, so for example, at a school that's completely British, they have all sorts of options for HLSL. And so a kid can go back and forth and make decisions and then drop a class and pick up another one and have enough choices to be able to do that. Now that those things are happening here, the amount of choices is not as big. And so for each student, depending on what they want to do as a major, they have to really look carefully at which method is going to give them the best preparation and make them the most competitive in their application process. So I don't know if all of the schools have a full program in both or all three. And as a result, I think you need to keep that in mind. Okay.
Thomas: And as you're seeing students come in, you're not seeing a clear Oh, the students in the A levels really know how to read more effectively, or the students that are doing IBS, or I tend to be better writers, because they're, having to write mono, it really is just school and teacher dependent.
Lauren: I think it's more even than that. I think it's student dependent. Student, I think a really good motivated student, if they have a fertile environment of good teaching, and a good curriculum in any of those will do well, and an unmotivated student or an uninterested student can have the best situation in the world and not do well. So I've seen kids come from places where you would never guess they would be so disciplined and focused and such good students, and it's all from their own internal motivation and quest for excellence. And ultimately, I think that's really what matters most.
Thomas: So you wouldn't be talking about one particular student you had from North Africa? Would
Lauren: You know, I would not be? I was not thinking of them at all.
Thomas: Not at all. I appreciate that. And I think, something that's very important, too, that we speak with students and their families about all the time is there's really in the admissions process nowhere to hide, right, you can't be a genius mathematician and just ignore the reading and the writing. Because it's not enough anymore. There was a brief period in time when universities that are graduate programs would admit these super quantitative, super bright students and realize that they just didn't survive the rigors of what's, you know what's ahead of them. But if we take the opposite, let's say we take somebody who does love to read and is maybe more creative and writes and does all these great things, but comes to you and says, Dr. Rubin, my math, how do you work with them?
Lauren: I'm so glad you brought this up. First of all, I think this is a trend that I don't necessarily think is a great one. I mean, when I was going to school, you could be spectacular in one and terrible at the other and still get into Yale. Or in fact, I had a friend who had no idea she was terrible in math, brilliant in English, and just filled in the dots on the LSAT in the math section. I still remember this and got a full scholarship because she was brilliant and that was great.
Unfortunately, now, these kids have to be super kids, not only in English and in math and the sciences, but then they have to have extracurriculars they have to do. You know, there's a lot of requirements and competitiveness that we didn't I don't think go through in the same way.
So I have a lot of compassion for that. I don't think it's easy to be great at everything. And yet, that's kind of the demand. So, we have to roll with the times and roll with the fact that it has become incredibly competitive, and what may have been okay, 20 years ago, is no longer going to work. And try to get kids to realize the value of even the subject they don't like, as a part, yes. Because almost every student I've ever had is better at one than the other. Right?
Thomas: Well, and I think I had this conversation, with Maui in the live coaching session, which is, especially in the United States, we take a liberal arts approach to university. And that means you have to take classes from multiple different disciplines, no matter what you want to study. And so if there is a method to this madness, there's a right he's in for the pain and suffering, even though it might not be apparent at that moment in time.
Lauren: Yes, right. I think that's great. And I think it's really important to explore college and take a lot of things in subjects that maybe you didn't have the opportunity to, or that you're maybe it's not your strongest, just to really balance out as a student, absolutely. But the level of ability has to be so high in all of these things for students that it does force them to be well-rounded. That's true. But I think some things fall by the wayside. And just circles back to our original, one of the biggest ones is reading, reading falls by the wayside, and writing, I have students whose curriculum doesn't even include that much writing.
And COVID made it even worse. COVID was a disaster for a lot of these kids in their formative years learning skills that they should have learned, and it's no one's fault. But online, it just did not transfer. And so what was already weak and get weaker, and more and more week and some of the reading that I hear that they're reading in class, I mean, I can't even believe it, I used to read those things for fun, I would never read them in a class, we read Faulkner in a class, that doesn't happen anymore. And so then when that even that is gone, then they're very ill-prepared to take a test like this, like the LSAT that demands a certain level of reading that they just don't have any experience in.
Thomas: And then even worse, they spend all this time with you, and they see their English grades improve, they're doing great their English teachers are telling them, they're they're just hitting it out of the park, their reading is improving them, they meet me. I make them write these admissions as these admissions essays that you still call me sometimes and say, What on earth kind of construct Are you trying to make happen here? Because, writing for admissions essays is such a completely different, completely different, completely different animal?
Lauren: It really is. It really isn't. I enjoy it. I think it's wonderful. But it is a whole other animal.
Thomas: Right? Well, because I think it's you're trying to communicate in a very limited amount of space ideas in a very different way, then, and you're far more sophisticated at breaking that down, but just from, an English to an English essay to an admissions essay. It's two very
Lauren: Hope, very, very different styles. Absolutely. And, I've learned so much from you about those. And one of the things I think is really important that makes them very different from their essays or doing in class is the requirement that they be vulnerable, and honest, to a bunch of people they don't even know. And yet without that vulnerability and honesty, the essay doesn't, it doesn't move anyone. And it doesn't make an impact. And it's very difficult. And I have a lot of empathy for that, to put your heart on the line to a bunch of people you'll never see, you'll never know. And you don't even know how many people are reading it. But that's what transfers. So I think kids really struggle with that.
Thomas: And the person reading it is speed reading it. And it might be the 20th application that their speed reading that day. There are very few professions that are as underpaid and underappreciated as the admissions officer.
Lauren: Wow. Yeah, it's very difficult. I mean, it's for me, it's hard to watch these kids give it their all work as hard as they can from morning till night, and still not get into a mid-level school at times if they don't know what to do. We have so many students that say I didn't know what to write on the essay, or I read the essay, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is horrible. And this isn't a horrible student. But why did they because they don't have any idea what they're supposed to do?
Thomas: Right. And I think too, and I'm in no way casting aspersions on English teachers, teachers, I still go back to my high school, and I see my English teachers, they have a very dear place in my heart, and Lauren and I share a love of reading and writing and word use. And we're, I know how that sounds. But, unfortunately, I think also a lot of very well-meaning English teachers offered to review admissions essays, and they review them from the perspective of an English teacher, which is very, very different from the critical, perspective of an admissions officer. And I think Lauren, you've gotten really, really good at making that transition with students in that shift in writing style and perspective.
Lauren: It's a very, I mean, it is a very different approach to writing. And even for the most simple things like transitional phrases and words, if you have 250 words, you don't have time to put in spite of, or although or in the, you know what I mean, and yet, they learn all throughout their career as writers that they should use transitional words and phrases to link their ideas. And they should, but not here. So then they start putting in a way, or, as an example, and you have to throw out all of those because they've just used six words that they need for something else that's more meaningful. So that's a small example, I think of the difficulty.
Thomas: Well, I think a point that we've discussed several times, too, is that when the student is writing, it's the old adage that too many cooks can spoil the soup. And what you want to be careful of when you're writing an essay is that your voice comes through, because I can tell you, as somebody who's read professionally, essays, at this point, hundreds of thousands of admissions essays, it's very, very clear to me, not usually to the student, where other people insert their voice.
And it's much better to have a slightly imperfect essay that captures the essence of the candidate than one that's super highly polished. And Lauren, you talked about this before that the intimacy, the vulnerability in that essay, when that's not there, the realness for lack of a better word, and that essay gets stripped away, and you're just left with a very slick piece of writing that is good, not great. And then you get moved off to the deny pile.
Lauren: Absolutely. I think that is a huge, I think kids get really afraid, they think they're not good enough that their ideas aren't good enough that their writing style isn't good enough. And so they need to go to this or that. Or they watch all sorts of podcasts or YouTube videos on the right way to write the application for UPenn. And so they lose any sense of themselves, which, ironically, is the one thing that would help, right?
Because they're trying to do it right. And they don't know what that means. And it certainly doesn't mean just being real. And yes, and once they are real, that's what moves people I think, and, I mean, there's ice there essays that I've read of students that I still remember, I know so well, just because they had such an impact on me. Personally, they were amazing.
Thomas: Absolutely, no, absolutely. I think we both probably have some of the same essays, same essays in mind. And then it gets compounded by the word limits. And one of my favorite quotes, anybody who's ever had to suffer through hearing me give a speech knows that I always quote Mark Twain saying, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time. It's hard work. It's hard to do. It is that's, there's a reason for that there's a reason the admissions committees craft these applications this way, because they want the essence they want the clarity of thought they want the self-awareness. And, that's hard.
Lauren: It's Right, absolutely. To write well, and in a concise way, not only is better writing in general but is a requirement for this kind of writing. Absolutely. And I think that the other thing kids are a little unprepared for is the multiple revisions that are required. They think they put, they can put down a good draft and say what they feel and they're done. I'm like, You're not done. I rewrite something four or five times before I even send it out. And I have a lot more experience with writing than they do. But you can't send out your first draft. It's never your best.
Thomas: No, ever No, it is.
Lauren: So they get frustrated.
Thomas: They do they do. And we've both been on the receiving end of that frustration and having to Tuck Tuck students down a little bit and, get them on board. And what I always think is great is when we're working with students together over a period of time, and just that that ebb and flow and there are that low points where they really just are absolutely fed up with the both of us and tired of us sending back revisions. And then we show them at the end. This is the essay you started with. And this is the one that you submitted. What do you think watching their eyes light up and say oh, Oh my gosh, I can't even recognize this first draft? I mean, this is just, oh, this thank you so much for helping me get out because they have it inside them. They know what they say it's just more the effectiveness of how to say it.
Lauren: Absolutely, and I think it also teaches those great skills, you have to dig deep you have to rewrite, and revise and work on it hard and make a huge effort. And ultimately, then you're going to be left with something you're really proud of. Because the admissions process is filled with uncertainties for them, they put out 10 applications and have no idea where they're going to be living the next year, who's going to accept them and tell them they're good enough who's not who's going to weightless them, it's very uncertain already.
So at least if they have an essay or a group of essays they're truly proud of, they can feel like they gave it their best. And whatever happens from there is out of their control, because it is, but at least they can really be proud of what they put into it. And I think that's an important part of the whole process.
Thomas: Absolutely, Lauren, I couldn't have said it better myself. And I think that's a great place to wrap up today's episode. Lauren, thank you so much. You're such an immense, thank you wonderful resource. You've been so wonderful for so many thousands of students over the years that the ones that you work with, in your practice the ones you work with pro bono, you just have a love of these students that resonates with me, and I'm so just awed by I would invite people to stop by your website center for scholastic-success.com. And then would also invite people to come to our website, thomascaleel.com for the admittedly podcast, if you leave us your email address, Dr. Rubin has a special writing guide that she will email to you that contains some of her really valuable insight into how to write effectively. And I think that you'll find it to be a great guide for everything for your exams your classes, and ultimately, for your college essays. Dr. RUBIN give you a chance for a last word,
Lauren: I just want to thank you so much, Thomas, for having me on your podcast, I really appreciate it. And I love talking about these things with you. I've, we've shared so many students that I feel just so grateful to have the opportunity to work with because of you. And I wish every student could work with you because you bring out the best in them and give them something not by being easy on them but by encouraging them to be their best. And I've seen you make changes in people's lives that are permanent and so spectacular that I really feel grateful to be a part of any of that. So thanks for having me.
Thomas: You're very kind and could not do it truly could not do it without you. We've had some great successes together. So thank you and I can't wait to have you back on here. I'm sure you're going to be in very high demand. So thank you very much.
Lauren: Thank you, Tom.
Thomas: Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to the admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admitted free podcasts. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
